Associated British Ports launches £2 billion plan for Energy Transition growth and Net Zero 2040
27 February 2023
Associated British Ports (ABP), which operates 21 ports and manages around 25% of the UK's sea-borne trade, has launched a wide ranging new sustainability strategy, ‘Ready for Tomorrow’ (RFT), backed by a plan to invest around £2 billion in decarbonising its own operations by 2040 at the latest and in major infrastructure projects to enable the wider UK energy transition.
Ready for Tomorrow looks both internally at ABP’s own operations and outwards, to building greater partnership and collaboration to meet the challenges and grasp the generational opportunities of sustainability, the group said in a statement.
For ABP’s own operations Ready for Tomorrow identifies five focus areas for action: Net Zero, air quality, biodiversity, waste and water management. Each focus area has a programme of action plans – including action ideas from ABP’s employees in our ports and other locations – to achieve ambitious but credible targets. This includes a commitment to reach Net Zero from ABP’s own operations (Scopes 1 and 2) by 2040.
The statement said: “Ready for Tomorrow embraces the fact that ports, and in particular ABP, as the UK's largest ports operator, have a vital and unique enabling role for a range of major decarbonisation and sustainability projects. For ABP this includes continuing to develop its leading offshore wind manufacturing and support hubs in the Humber and East Anglia, as well as more than doubling its own green power generation.”
ABP’s future major projects portfolio, along with industrial partners, includes developments in South Wales, the Solent, Humber and East Anglia. These cover floating offshore wind (including a major integration port hub centred on Port Talbot), hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, industrial decarbonisation and alternative fuels.
ABP’s £2 billion green growth and decarbonisation plan brings together projects that will deliver major emissions reduction and sustainability improvements for ABP itself with green growth energy transition projects developed in partnership with customers, it said.
Download the full ABP Ready for Tomorrow sustainability strategy document here.